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Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

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Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#71

Post by mattnewport »

electrograv wrote: post #5

> Netflix said in a statement that “the reviews and our redesigned ratings system (thumbs up/down) never contributed to how we approach personalizing recommendations for members and writing a ‘bad’ review never had any bearing to whether a title was recommended to another viewer or not.” THAT explains why Netflix keeps recommending me garbage quality content! I had a suspicion this was true, but couldn’t imagine anyo…

It got bad enough for me that I deleted my Netflix account a few months ago and haven't really missed it. I got tired of scrolling through for ages and never finding anything I felt like watching. It still surprises me that they don't do a better job of recommendations given they used to make a big deal out of it.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#72

Post by riffraff »

smsm42 wrote: post #59
danmaz74 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember that in the beginning the recommendations for the streaming service were pretty good. But they became worse and worse, at least for me.

One has to wonder how comes that recommendations were pretty good, but then they spent millions of dollars on improving them, including highly-publicized competitions and a lot of work inhouse I assume, and not they are not.

I have movies I have already rated (i.e. watched) in the "watch next" list. Sure, it can happen that I want to watch them again, but it seems unlikely.

It seems clear netflix is optimizing for something which is not just "the movie this user would like to watch next".

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#73

Post by ghaff »

aestetix wrote: post #58
ghaff wrote: post #29

It's hard for me to get too upset. Personally, it seems a bit conspiracy theory to think it's people might read negative reviews. Seems more likely it was a poorly used resource and Netflix didn't see the value in continue to support, maintain, and screen it. That aside, it points to a couple of issues. There is a lot of bad content on Netflix. It never had a good film catalog and their TV strategy has clearly evolve…

> It never had a good film catalog This is false. I remember in 2007/2008 using Netflix a lot to get some really amazing and hard to find movies. The same was true of their streaming service in its infancy. Now they seem to have abandoned their movie selection altogether and are focusing on making their own stuff. I'm guessing it's because licensing became a huge headache for them.

The cost of licensing has certainly gone up in general. But even quite a few years back a then-Netflix exec told me that people came to Netflix for the movies but ended up staying for TV.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#74

Post by riffraff »

sosborn wrote: post #48
slededit wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only watch shows they recommend though! You get stuck in a local maxima with no way to escape. God help you if you watch a WWII documentary. I so rarely find a title I search for that I don't bother with that anymore.

> I can only watch shows they recommend though! That's not true at all. You can absolutely browse by genre, actor, etc.

not on my smart tv (tizen), or at least not in any sensible way.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#75

Post by dictum »

always_good wrote: post #25
scarface74 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How in the world does this make sense? The entire competitive advantage of having the scale and user information that Netflix has is to be able to do personal recommendations by recommending shows based on what others with similar taste like. Heck, I know very little about big data and even I have walked through a simple sentiment analysis proof of concept demo to rate comments as positive or negative.

Why take someone's word for what they like or don't like when you know what they actually watch?

That's how we got the hate read content economy.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#76

Post by hellofunk »

apo wrote: post #22

It may also be the case that negative reviews of movies, TV shows, and stand-up specials did more to dissuade potential viewers than positive reviews did them to draw in; ... Netflix's bigger problem is that much of its content looks good on the surface, but on closer inspection is not worth the time. A lot of this stuff is produced by Netflix itself. Bill Nye's most recent show comes to mind, but there's a lot more.…

Netflix is in the game of "filler" content. They will make money even if the content is mediocre because (many) people will turn to Netflix even if the quality is not stellar. That's unfortunate but a reality of the business model. If it didn't work, they wouldn't keep making lots of crap.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#77

Post by blubb-fish »

Are there alternatives to Netflix? Amazon Prime certainly isn't. Serious question - especially for German audience. I would like something with older and more niche movies. F.x. on Netflix Germany neither is nor ever was a Fellini flick ... actually "Federico Fellini" is not even suggested upon searching for "Fellini".

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/shortcuts/2017/oct/...

- Fandor: only US and CAN

- Mubi: also Germany

- Filmstruck: not Germany

- Yaddo: apparently worldwide

(skipped what didn't appeal to me)

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#78

Post by throwaway0255 »

api wrote: post #15

I've noticed for a while that Netflix seems to be making it a lot harder to rate content and find high quality content. It's like they want you to watch junk. Maybe junk has lower licensing fees so it increases their margins. I've found some amazing gems digging through Netflix and relying on user ratings. They were films I probably never would have found otherwise. A few somewhat recent examples that come to mind ar…

> Maybe junk has lower licensing fees so it increases their margins.

It has to be something like this. Licensing fees based on views, or maybe the license terms stipulate that they're not allowed to promote it or something.

Often I'll be browsing around in some deep page in Netflix and randomly see some AAA major Oscar title that's not mentioned or promoted anywhere. It just makes no sense.

Maybe these are expensive views, so Netflix reserves surfacing them only for people who have taken actions that indicate they're having trouble finding anything they like?

To kind of "rescue" users who are on the verge of cancelling?

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#79

Post by slededit »

sosborn wrote: post #48
slededit wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can only watch shows they recommend though! You get stuck in a local maxima with no way to escape. God help you if you watch a WWII documentary. I so rarely find a title I search for that I don't bother with that anymore.

> I can only watch shows they recommend though! That's not true at all. You can absolutely browse by genre, actor, etc.

It's still heavily colored by your history. Using someone else's Netflix was really an eye opener. This new algo driven world is stifling.

Re: Netflix Has Deleted Every User Review Ever Posted to Its Website

#80

Post by cube2222 »

scarface74 wrote: post #51
ghaff wrote: post #29

It's hard for me to get too upset. Personally, it seems a bit conspiracy theory to think it's people might read negative reviews. Seems more likely it was a poorly used resource and Netflix didn't see the value in continue to support, maintain, and screen it. That aside, it points to a couple of issues. There is a lot of bad content on Netflix. It never had a good film catalog and their TV strategy has clearly evolve…

It's hard for me to get too upset. Personally, it seems a bit conspiracy theory to think it's people might read negative reviews. I agree. Why would I care about whether reviews are positive or negative about a movie before I started watching it? It’s not like I have spent money if 30 minutes in I realize it’s trash. I feel the same way about movie reviews now that I have AMC subscription movie service. If a movie is…

For me personally, if I lose half an hour, I lose as much money as I get for half an hour of work.

That's why I love content recommendation systems which actually work. Though the downside is, that today's systems (looking at you, Spotify) close you in kind of a bubble.

The best I've met was Google play music, the recommendations were great and at the same time you got to know a lot of great content unlike anything you've heard before! I switched, because unfortunately it seemed like nobody was working on it anymore.

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